.\" $NetBSD: bm.3,v 1.9 2016/01/23 00:43:42 dholland Exp $ .\" .\" Copyright (c) 1994 .\" The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. .\" .\" This code is derived from software contributed to Berkeley by .\" Andrew Hume of AT&T Bell Laboratories. .\" .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions .\" are met: .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. .\" 3. Neither the name of the University nor the names of its contributors .\" may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software .\" without specific prior written permission. .\" .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE REGENTS AND CONTRIBUTORS ``AS IS'' AND .\" ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE .\" ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE REGENTS OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE .\" FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL .\" DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS .\" OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) .\" HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT .\" LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY .\" OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF .\" SUCH DAMAGE. .\" .\" from: @(#)bm.3 8.4 (Berkeley) 6/21/94 .\" .Dd April 8, 2001 .Dt BM 3 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm bm_comp , .Nm bm_exec , .Nm bm_free .Nd Boyer-Moore string search .Sh LIBRARY .Lb libc .Sh SYNOPSIS .In sys/types.h .In bm.h .Ft bm_pat * .Fn bm_comp "unsigned char *pattern" "size_t patlen" "unsigned char freq[256]" .Ft unsigned char * .Fn bm_exec "bm_pat *pdesc" "unsigned char *text" "size_t len" .Ft void .Fn bm_free "bm_pat *pdesc" .Sh DESCRIPTION These routines implement an efficient mechanism to find an occurrence of a byte string within another byte string. .Pp .Fn bm_comp evaluates the .Fa patlen bytes starting at .Fa pattern , and returns a pointer to a structure describing them. The bytes referenced by .Fa pattern may be of any value. .Pp The search takes advantage of the frequency distribution of the bytes in the text to be searched. If specified, .Fa freq should be an array of 256 values, with higher values indicating that the corresponding character occurs more frequently. (A less than optimal frequency distribution can only result in less than optimal performance, not incorrect results.) If .Fa freq is .Dv NULL , a system default table is used. .Pp .Fn bm_exec returns a pointer to the leftmost occurrence of the string given to .Fn bm_comp within .Fa text , or .Dv NULL if none occurs. The number of bytes in .Fa text must be specified by .Fa len . .Pp Space allocated for the returned description is discarded by calling .Fn bm_free with the returned description as an argument. .Pp The asymptotic speed of .Fn bm_exec is O(len/patlen). .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr regexp 3 , .Xr strstr 3 .Rs .%A Hume and Sunday .%D November 1991 .%J "Software Practice and Experience" .%P pp. 1221-48 .%T "Fast String Searching" .%V Vol. 21, 11 .Re